Eeek!

Like I do every morning, I switched on the PC and decided to check my e-mail. The page cannot be displayed. I thought to myself, maybe its the home cable net service that’s konked out. Dial up refuses to work either. Mild panic. Rush to the office.

The page cannot be displayed.

Once those words flashed on to the office PC and I got an SMS asking if my internet service was working, I felt like it was one of those dark days last year, where we were cut off from the internet for over a week. Turns out, there was an internet outage for one and a half hour. While my work didnt get affected that much, I wonder how much loss has been incurred by companies that rely solely on the internet to communicate and do business? I’m sure PTA will have a ‘good’ explanation for this.

I’m at an ISP and though some of the downtimes are caused by our own network, I would say upto 90% of them are due to the international links (namely PTA).

Instead of improving their service, they seem to be more concerned about blocking blogging sites and anything that goes against the government. All in the name of religion. And voice traffic off course. When will they come into the 3rd millenium?

What the Pakistan government should do is privatize the ISP and open the sector to competition. A government monopoly is never good. We had similar problems in India till the government here sold the ISP off.

There was indeed a problem faced by a few…and it was at PTCL’s or rather Pakistan Internet Exchange’s (PIE) end…….”There was a hardware problem at PIE Karachi, which caused outage from 0905 Hrs to 1020 Hrs on May 24, 2006.”